]]>http://www.themarysue.com/things-we-saw-today-785/feed/02015 Is the Future: Tesla Cars Are Getting Autopilot in a Software Update in Just Three Months - The future of the '80s is finally here.http://www.themarysue.com/tesla-autopilot-mode/
http://www.themarysue.com/tesla-autopilot-mode/#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 18:14:06 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=291962

There was an urban legend when I was growing up about someone who thought “cruise control” was autopilot in their RV, turned it on, and went in the back to make a sandwich. Tesla Motors is set to make that tall tale obsolete in the coming months with a real autopilot mode for its cars to drive themselves down the highway.

The feature falls short of full self-driving, which many companies are working to create and would potentially remove the need for a human to do more in a car than set a destination. Tesla’s autopilot is a lot more like the perfection of cruise control: on the highway, it’ll automatically steer your vehicle to keep it on course. That way, you’ll be able to do more to entertain yourself on long highway trips than sing along to your music embarrassingly emphatically.

We’re pretty excited about the progress we’re making there. The main test route that we’re evaluating is the San Francisco to Seattle route, and we’re now almost able to travel all the way from San Francisco to Seattle without the driver touching any controls at all.

That’s a feature that requires a lot of validation testing, but we’re hoping that we can start releasing the first sort of auto-steering features in about three months or so.

Tesla Model S owners will be able to get the update when it’s available in a few months as long as they sprang for the extra “optional tech” package when they spent a bunch of money on their bananas future-car. He also mentioned that new updates would come with a feature that warns a driver if they’re about to go farther from the nearest charging station than they have power to drive back to end “range anxiety” in the electric vehicles.

So the Tesla cars are kind of becoming the sentient robot transportation buddy we’ve always wanted. Really, they’ll even be able to drive up to you when “summoned” with the push of a button, but that feature isn’t ready—or legal—for public roads. Yet. Now if only they built Mr. Feeny’s voice into them…

Not only did SpaceX give their future rocket a hardcore name—the “Falcon Heavy”—but they also set this video of it to some serious hard rock. And justifiably so—the video shows a concept that includes a rocket that can safely fly and land itself back on Earth.

The first test kind slammed right into the landing barge, but hey. This video is about the future. The hard-rockin’ future.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/rockin-rocket/feed/0For $85 on Airbnb, You Can Be the Junk in Elon Musk’s Trunk - OK, on a technicality, but still.http://www.themarysue.com/be-the-junk-in-musks-trunk/
http://www.themarysue.com/be-the-junk-in-musks-trunk/#commentsFri, 23 Jan 2015 17:48:52 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=277626

A guy from Phoenix, Arizona noticed his Tesla Model S had enough back to fit an air mattress in there, and after using it as his own portable, environmentally friendly hotel several times, he’s opening up the opportunity to everyone on Airbnb. $85 might seem like a steep asking price to sleep in a trunk, but the Model S probably cost him more than some people’s homes you could stay in.

Sadly, the Model S in question belongs to Steve Sassman and not actually Tesla Motors’ own Elon Musk, but sleeping in its trunk is still probably the closest many of us would ever get to having one of the cars to call our own. The luxury car runs $118,000 and has great hotel-like amenities such as… heat and air conditioning that you can run all night without worrying about the car poisoning you inside the tiny garage unlike Stone Age internal combustion vehicles.

Tall people need not apply, though, as Sassman wrote, “Sorry, NO NBA Players allowed. Despite my love for basketball, the Tesla is just too small for anyone over 6′ 6″. Please… stop asking.” But who are these people who sleep on their backs and don’t curl their legs up anyway? Sacrifices must be made to sleep in the trunk that Musk built!

And remember, you’re basically sleeping in the most boring Transformer ever in a hotel/car hybrid, and Sassman is also an Uber driver who will transport you wherever you need to go in the Phoenix area for a small additional fee. You know what? At first I thought this was silly, but now it’s actually sounding weirdly brilliant. Maybe there’s a reason Sassman can afford a Model S while I can only afford to sleep in one.

Not only would Musk’s still-unnamed plan to put satellites at a much lower orbit than traditional communications satellites—about 750 miles up as opposed to 22,000—help speed up Internet traffic around the world, but it would greatly improve web access in the developing world. Even if that developing world is another planet.

Musk wants to use the network, which he says won’t be active for at least five years, as a testing ground for a global communications network for Martian colonists as well as a potential revenue stream to keep settlements on the Red Planet running. Musk told Businessweek, “It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well. I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.”

Musk has also recently announced that he’ll be building a five-mile test track for his futuristic Hyperloop transportation system. We may not have flying cars or Mr. Fusion yet, but at least our real world future finally seems to be taking shape.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/elon-musk-space-internet/feed/0Elon Musk Donates $10 Million to Make Sure A.I. Research Doesn’t Bring About Age of Ultron - Come with millions if you want to live.http://www.themarysue.com/elon-musk-10-million-ai-donation/
http://www.themarysue.com/elon-musk-10-million-ai-donation/#commentsThu, 15 Jan 2015 19:08:43 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=275640

I’ll stop saying Elon Musk is secretly Tony Stark when he stops acting like it, and he’s been very concerned about unstoppable AI destroying all of humanity lately. The Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder is so concerned, in fact, that he’s now donated $10 million towards research into how to create sophisticated AI without any Skynet-like tendencies.

Musk’s donation went to the Future of Life Institute, which is the organization that recently released an open letter advocating for AI researchers to put more effort into making sure that their computer brains not only excel at their tasks but also think about the greater good of humanity while completing them. A whole lot of scientific and computer learning experts signed on in support, but Musk’s donation should help them actually get the job done.

He’s quoted in FLI’s blog post about the donation to say, “Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important. I agree with them, so I’m today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.” The post goes on to elaborate about how the money will be used:

The $10M program will be administered by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization whose scientific advisory board includes AI-researchers Stuart Russell and Francesca Rossi. “I love technology, because it’s what’s made 2015 better than the stone age”, says MIT professor and FLI president Max Tegmark. “Our organization studies how we can maximize the benefits of future technologies while avoiding potential pitfalls.”

The research supported by the program will be carried out around the globe via an open grants competition, through an application portal at http://futureoflife.org that will open by Monday January 19. The plan is to award the majority of the grant funds to AI researchers, and the remainder to AI-related research involving other fields such as economics, law, ethics and policy (a detailed list of examples can be found here). “Anybody can send in a grant proposal, and the best ideas will win regardless of whether they come from academia, industry or elsewhere”, says FLI co-founder Viktoriya Krakovna.

Along with research grants, the program will also include meetings and outreach programs aimed at bringing together academic AI researchers, industry AI developers and other key constituents to continue exploring how to maximize the societal benefits of AI; one such meeting was held in Puerto Rico last week with many of the open-letter signatories.

Do you think we could score a grant if we promise FLI that we’ll keep making Terminator/Avengers jokes about artificial intelligence to literally anyone who will listen?

Sure, we nearly constantly warn the Internet about the impending threat of our eventual robot overlords, but who wants to listen to a bunch of bloggers making nervous Terminator jokes? Now there’s an open letter signed by actual experts in artificial intelligence that urges everyone to make sure that they build their AI to factor “Is this good for humans?” into its decisions.

The letter’s signatories include Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, both of whomhave recently expressed concern over the future of AI and whether or not we’re going to Tony Stark ourselves right into an Ultron situation. Other big names include DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman; Microsoft research director Eric Horvitz; Yann LeCun, head of Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; tons of university computer science professors; and more.

It comes from the Future of Life Institute and makes the important distinction between programming AI to make the most logically sound decision above all else and programming it to make the most societally beneficial decision. They have an in-depth attachment detailing the research priorities that AI firms should consider moving forward so that computers make the latter call in a given situation instead of the former.

That way, we’re a lot less likely to wind up with artificial intelligence that decides the human race is an unnecessary liability in balancing its internal logic. Not only that, but when we have computers making decisions involving things like global financial institutions, it’s important that they consider the impact on society as a whole and not just what’s right in front of them, so to speak.

We’re still trying to get human beings to think the same way, so AI researchers have their work cut out for them.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/ai-expert-open-letter/feed/0SpaceX Crash Landed a Rocket From Space on a Barge, and That’s Pretty Impressive - If at first you don't succeed...http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-falcon-rocket-landing-crash/
http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-falcon-rocket-landing-crash/#commentsMon, 12 Jan 2015 19:52:50 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=274603

Don’t be disheartened by all the talk about SpaceX’s Falcon rocket crashing instead of landing safely on a barge as planned. Instead, be amazed that they successfully crash-landed a rocket in a designated area at all.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk believes that reusable rockets are a necessary part of making regular space travel practical, and their Falcon 9 rocket tried to make its first landing on solid ground this morning after coming back from a real resupply mission to the International Space Station. The technique has been successful in tests flights, but it ended with a crash landing on the first practical attempt.

But it was still a pretty impressive achievement. The crash landing didn’t leave SpaceX with a rocket they could use again, but they did manage to get a speeding rocket from the heavens to hit a relatively small patch of our planet and not completely obliterate everything in the area. It may have left battle scars, but at least it came down on target with just minor adjustments necessary to make sure the next attempt involves significantly less exploding.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-falcon-rocket-landing-crash/feed/0Elon Musk Is Afraid We Might Create Ultron, He Is Now Officially Tony Stark - There are no strings on Musk.http://www.themarysue.com/elon-musk-tony-stark-ultron-ai/
http://www.themarysue.com/elon-musk-tony-stark-ultron-ai/#commentsMon, 27 Oct 2014 16:29:09 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=255620Now do you believe me that Elon Musk is not-so-secretly Iron Man? The dude is worried about Ultron, for crap's sake! Whoever came up with this viral marketing campaign for Age of Ultron deserves a raise.]]>

Now do you believe me that Elon Musk is not-so-secretly Iron Man? The dude is worried about Ultron, for crap’s sake! Whoever came up with this viral marketing campaign for Age of Ultron deserves a raise.

The Tesla Motors/SpaceX founder decided to warn us all about the end of the path MIT has started us on at their AeroAstro Centennial Symposium late last week. If you want to hear all that the brilliant entrepreneur/superhero had to say about the future of aerospace, you can watch it above or fast forward to the relevant bit (about 1:07:25) where he comments that opening the pod bay doors will be the least of our concerns in the future of AI:

[Musk] I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. I mean, with artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like—Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

[Professor Jaime Peraire] So I’ll take it there’ll be no HAL9000 going to mars?

[Musk] Heh. HAL 9000 would be easy. [This AI would be] way more complex… it’d put HAL9000 to shame. That’s like a puppy dog.

At least our real-world Tony Stark is having his second thoughts before this happens:

But if it does happen, can it still be voiced by James Spader in real life? At least make humanity’s demise worth it.

Elon Musk, founder Tesla Motors and SpaceX (as well as real-life Tony Stark, depending on who you ask), tweeted out this promotional picture for what many presume to be Tesla’s latest upcoming car model on his personal Twitter account last night. So that excited shrieking sound you heard about 14 hours ago? That was the entire Internet understanding the hilarious gift they’d been given.

And if you, like Musk, are not exactly up on the lingo when it comes to that particular phrase, just pretend you are 12 years old again and search your tiny pre-pubescent feelings. There. It’s exactly what you think it is.

Wait, so what’s the other letter that it would exacerbate this situation even further? B? T? V? Are his next models just going to spell D-I-C-K as a workaround of his original S-E-X plan? The world wants to know, Elon! Give us the D…etails!

Real-life-Tony-Stark Elon Musk thinks the only way to save humanity over the long-term is to get 1 million people to Mars. That may sound like a far-fetched goal, but he’s already got a plan in the works to make it happen with SpaceX.

And when I say “long-term,” I mean so long that it boggles the mind to even consider it. As Aeon writes in their recent interview with Musk, if the Earth’s ecosystem isn’t destroyed by humans, natural environmental changes, or other unforeseen events, it will still be ruined well before the Sun explodes by changes in the star’s lifecycle. The Earth will become a hot, violent, radioactive ball of death, and if humanity is to survive that, we really shouldn’t procrastinate—whether or not we have about 500 million to 1 billion years to pull it off.

As the Earth and Mars swing through their orbits, they go from being impossibly far apart (1,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon) to fairly close together (only 150 times further than the moon). When they’re close, human travel to Mars is much more practical. The next time this happens is only four years away, but in the 2030s it will happen again, and Musk intends to be ready with SpaceX to have a settlement running on Mars by 2040.

Musk told Aeon:

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

And that they’d also need a million or more people, eventually, to form a stable civilization:

Even at a million, you’re really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars. You would need to mine and refine all of these different materials, in a much more difficult environment than Earth. There would be no trees growing. There would be no oxygen or nitrogen that are just there. No oil.

He envisions that they could hit that 1 million people mark within a century. Mars isn’t a permanent solution to save us from the Sun’s death, but it would certainly help and give us experience as we try to move further out among the stars.

The entire interview with Musk is as fascinating as you’d expect from the man behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX, but I’m a sucker for anybody who wants to put human beings on another planet in my lifetime. SpaceX is one of the organizations I actually believe could pull it off, which makes this ambition on Musk’s part all that much more exciting. Keep it up, Iron Man.

The Georgia Automobile Dealers Association doesn’t like electric car maker Tesla Motors cutting out the middleman and selling directly to consumers. I wonder why that is? So they’re crying foul on a rule that limits the number of cars Tesla can sell in a year. Meanwhile, Nevada is laughing all the way to the bank (screw electricity. I want one of these laugh-powered cars that Nevada is getting) as Tesla prepares to build a huge factory there.

The GADA claims that Tesla is violating the exception that allows the automaker to sell cars directly to customers, because it imposes a maximum of 150 cars sold per year on custom car manufacturers, and Tesla has sold over that number. Further, the association argues that Tesla shouldn’t qualify for the “custom manufacturer” stipulation, because their cars are mass produced.

Bill Morie, president of the GADA, said to Automotive News, “New-vehicle dealers just want a level playing field on which to complete. No one should be allowed to act as if they are above the law, especially when there is a simple path to compliance that everyone else has agreed to follow.” The dealers have started a petition to shut Tesla down, because that “path to compliance” entails—you guessed it—selling through franchised dealers.

In response, Tesla claims that no violation of Georgia law has been made, because the 150-car limit applies per calendar year, and the petition shows 173 vehicles sold from October to June. Simon Sproule of Tesla told Automotive News, “[The petition] is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to stifle new innovation and eliminate consumer choice by trying to establish a monopoly that restricts the way consumers can buy new vehicles.”

Georgia’s loss is Nevada’s gain—well, not literally, but man are the two states having different reactions to Tesla. Maybe Nevada loves them so much because the giant “gigafactory” they’re building there will spend $4-5 billion in construction costs and employ 6,500 people? Yeah, that probably has something to do with it.

The factory will allow Tesla to substantially lower the cost of their batteries, which is something they need to do to get their mass-market appealing Model 3 down to an appropriate price point. With the new factory lowering costs and making the Model 3 even more appealing, Georgia might want to get used to Tesla, because it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere.

We’ve been pretty excited about SpaceX lately with their Falcon 9 rocket launches and landings, the Dragon V2 crew module, and their new spaceport in Texas, but some members of congress don’t share our enthusiasm. Three members of congress in particular are trying to put unnecessary road blocks in front of SpaceX for their own interests. Maybe no one told them that where SpaceX is going, they don’t need roads?

Metaphorical roadblocks could still cause the company problems, though, as House of Representatives members Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) have sent a memo to NASA asking that they investigate an “epidemic of anomalies” in SpaceX missions and make a full report to congress. They say they’re concerned about SpaceX wasting taxpayer money on developing technology that keeps having problems.

However, as Phil Plait and SpaceNews have pointed out, Elon Musk has already said that SpaceX didn’t use any of its NASA funding dollars for the Falcon 9. Any funding they did receive on other projects was only supplemental and came through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, which was created to coordinate private companies making deliveries of cargo and crew to the ISS, as a result of the Space Act.

SpaceX has successfully delivered cargo to the ISS several times now, their Falcon 9 rockets don’t have any more technical problems than any comparably sophisticated technology, and their Dragon V2 crew module looks nothing short of amazing, so what gives? Unfortunately, it seems that the House members are trying to cause trouble with SpaceX to defend the interests of competitor United Launch Alliance, which has its HQ in the home state of Gardner and Coffman—right in Coffman’s own district.

Add to that ULA and Space Launch System partner Boeing’s plant in Alabama, and it starts to look a lot like this call for transparency is more likely a defense of the interests of individual politicians. There’s nothing inherently wrong with transparency, but in this case, I won’t be a bit surprised when these same representatives want to pick over every little detail to bog down SpaceX and make them look bad as they have with calling minor, expected kinks in the grand scheme of the company’s success an “epidemic of anomalies.”

At least they’re honest about their love of transparency—it’s pretty easy to see right through them.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/congress-keeping-spacex-down/feed/0The Tesla Motors $35,000 Model 3 Might Just Be the Electric Car You’ve Been Waiting For - Anyone have $35,000 I can borrow? It's for the environment.http://www.themarysue.com/tesla-model-3/
http://www.themarysue.com/tesla-model-3/#commentsWed, 16 Jul 2014 23:30:05 +0000http://www.themarysue.com/?p=222245

Electric cars are great and all, but most of them suffer from short ranges and long charging time or a high price tag. Well, Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3 is going to change all of that with a car that offers the long travel ranges Tesla is known for without their equally high prices. If $35,000 is still a little outside of your budget, don’t forget that Tesla Supercharger stations will charge your car for free.

While Tesla cars already boast a 200-mile range that’s roughly double that of other electromobiles like the Nissan Leaf, their current models are $100,000 and $70,000—not exactly your every day sedan. Still, they’ve already set up a network of their 20-minute Supercharger stations that can already, with some careful planning, allow coast to coast roadtrips in Tesla vehicles.

Lowering the entry cost for the average person to get an electric car should, in theory, lead to an even wider spread of the charging stations as more people get behind the wheel. Then that will lead to more people buying the cars, which will then lead to—you get the idea. It’s like a vicious cycle of glorious, environment-saving technology.

It’s probably a good idea, too, since Tesla Motors’s patents recently went open source, so they won’t be the only ones producing cheap electric vehicles based on their technology in the coming years. The Model 3 will set the bar for what a low-cost, high-performance electric car should be, and that healthy competition will benefit everyone as the number of affordable vehicles using the same electric infrastructure grows.

Today would have been Nikola Tesla’s 158th birthday. A lot of people are celebrating, but it’s going to be tough to beat Elon Musk’s gift. According to the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, Musk just donated $1 million and a Tesla Supercharging Station to the organization.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, as well as a real life Tony Stark. During the initial crowdfunding campaign to buy Tesla’s original lab at Wardenclyffe, Musk donated $2,500 to the effort. The Oatmealcreator Matthew Inman, who helped raise the money to buy the lab recently, drew a comic calling on Musk to donate the full $8 million it’s going to take to build a science center on the site.

Of course the organization has a long way to go, and $1 million isn’t $8 million (that math checks out, right?) but this is still an incredibly generous gift from Musk. Which seems to be his thing lately; he also generously made all of the patents for Tesla Motors open source to encourage innovation and reduce car emissions.

Now we just need seven other crazy rich science-loving people to jump in on this thing. Bill Gates, you’re up I guess?

SpaceX is attempting to launch a satellite into orbit today using their Falcon 9 rocket. Conditions aren’t great, and the launch has already been delayed to the end of its flight window, 7:01PM ET. They’re livestreaming it. Here’s how to watch.

Unfortunately the live stream is not embeddable or I’d post it here for you. Instead you’ll have to head to SpaceX’s site or their Livestream page to watch. Good luck, Elon!

Elon Musk just made all the patents held by Tesla Motors open source, paving the way for more innovation in the electric car market. It’s great news for anyone looking to build an electric car, and even for anyone hoping to someday buy one. The real question here is, “Why?”

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

So go forth, innovators and innovate—quickly if you could. I’m writing this blog post from the service department waiting room of a car dealership that’s currently fixing my gasoline-burning nightmare car for the thousandth (estimated) time this year. It would be great if the next car I buy is an affordable electric one with fewer moving parts to break.

Need some inspiration? Here’s They Might Be Giants’ “Electric Car” to bop along to while you work.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/open-source-tesla-patents/feed/0Get a Look at SpaceX’s New Dragon V2 and Its 3D Printed, Land-Anywhere Engine Technology - This looks a lot safer than other space travel methods suggested over the last few weeks...http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-dragon-v2-replay/
http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-dragon-v2-replay/#commentsFri, 30 May 2014 14:57:46 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=209142

Looks like we won’t be needing that space trampoline after all, Dmitry Rogozin. SpaceX unveiled their first Dragon spacecraft designed to take a crew of astronauts to the ISS last night, and it’s an improvement in every way over current methods of putting humans in orbit.

Jump to about four minutes into the presentation above to see an animation that shows how the Dragon V2 will fly, dock with the ISS, and land anywhere on Earth in a controlled manner. You should watch the whole thing, but make sure you don’t miss that or the part at around 12:50 where SpaceX CEO Elon Musk steps inside the capsule like a boss.

Not only does the Dragon V2 increase the number of passengers it can ferry to the ISS from three to seven (compared to the Russian Soyuz), but its 3D-printed SuperDraco engines allow it to make a safe landing with the accuracy of a helicopter, according to Musk. That’s a big step up over splashing down in the ocean with parachutes, because it means the Dragon can be refueled and fly again almost immediately—not to mention that SpaceX isn’t shy about pointing out that Earth isn’t the only planet the Dragon could make that landing on.

That’s right, we’re coming to rescue you, Mars rovers! Hold tight!

Reusable spacecraft are a big part of Musk’s plan to make getting to space easier and more affordable, and the Dragon V2 goes a long way in that department. It’s going to take a few years yet before the Dragon is ready to make a manned flight, but that’s a perfect timeframe considering that NASA just bought what will probably be its last tickets to ride a Russian Soyuz to space, and those will be good until late 2017.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/spacex-dragon-v2-replay/feed/1Russian Official Says NASA Can Go F@&# Itself Use a Trampoline to Send Astronauts to Space - Well that's not very nice at all.http://www.themarysue.com/russian-space-trampoline/
http://www.themarysue.com/russian-space-trampoline/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 20:23:05 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=204908

Things between Russia and the United States are a little… complicated at the moment due to tensions over the Ukraine/Crimea situation. NASA relies on the Russians to get American astronauts to and from the ISS, but a Russian Deputy Prime Minister has suggested maybe we should be using a trampoline instead. Wait. That won’t work, will it?

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted a response to the recent sanctions the U.S. has put on Russia saying that after reviewing the sanctions he suggests America send its astronauts to space using a trampoline. We’re not rocket scientists, but that doesn’t seem like a serious, viable suggestion for space flight at all. Instead, it sounds more like Rogozin’s telling NASA where to shove it.

Thankfully, Rogozin is in charge of Russia’s defense industry, not their space program and his tweet isn’t exactly official policy. At least for America’s part NASA Chief Charles Bolden says the relationship between our two countries’ space programs are “amicable” even if the rest of our governments don’t get along.

That could change, obviously, so maybe we should start looking at other options for sending humans into space than relying on the Russians’ Soyuz rockets and capsules.

Elon Musk stepped in to do a quick Tony Stark impression and remind everyone that his company SpaceX is currently working on solving that exact problem.

Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/russian-space-trampoline/feed/1New Official Comedy Sketch Acknowledges Our Deep Desire to Smell Like Elon Musk - We bet it smells like space, the inside of the hyperloop, and money.http://www.themarysue.com/elons-musk/
http://www.themarysue.com/elons-musk/#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 18:59:59 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=191078

We can all agree that if Tony Stark were real, he’d smell great. Elon Musk is basically the real life Tony Stark, so of course he should have a fragrance, and of course we would want it. Unfortunately, this is just a comedy sketch, and it doesn’t even smell like anything. Still. We love it anyway.